The Leaf's Soul Reaper
by Ghingahn
Summary: Uzumaki Naruto dies at six years old when a hollow severs his chain of fate. Things don't get much better from there.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ and _Bleach_ belong to their respective owners.

A brown-eyed woman scowled in the shadow of the Hokage Tower. She leaned against one of the thick-branched trees native only to Fire Country, staring at the weak, flimsy wood wall of the tower and imagining the red paint was fire raging up its surface. She felt like she was burning up already anyway, so it wasn't difficult. How did these people stand it? Her home's climate was harsh at times, she was more than willing to admit, but at least it didn't feel like a pressure cooker even in autumn.

Her chest ached at the thought. The pain barely registered, it being nothing compared to what she had suffered through just a few days earlier, but she glanced down anyway. As it had since it first appeared, the sight of the chain extending out of her body made her anger flare up again. The chain itself only unsettled her, the way the heated metal came out of her flesh as if it was a part of her making her want to try yanking it out again as she had that first day. The thing that truly bit deep, though, was what she knew it signified.

The other end of the metal links went into the ground, passing through grass and soil to end up at something she could neither see nor reach on the other side. She could guess what it was attached to, though.

She looked back up, at the people entering and exiting the building, and at the gutless civilians and monsters bustling about on the street across from the tower. Not a single one so much as glanced at her. They went about their worthless lives, uncaring of the atrocities being carelessly committed beneath their feet.

About the same as home, honestly. Replace all the frilly plants and mushy loam with good, solid rock and tough little shrubs, fix the buildings out of sturdy brick instead of dead trees, cool the temperature down by about forty degrees and take out all the humidity, have the street-side vendors and restaurants sell actual food instead of whatever bizarre variations of slime mulch they were currently hawking. (She saw a child happily licking at what looked like a weeping yellow eyeball balanced on a cone made out of tree bark—she wouldn't put it past them, not when she kept seeing them munch on actual honest flowers as if they were candy—and spared a moment to glare ineffectually at the mother who apparently condoned this.) Do all that, and outwardly at least it might look a bit like home.

She let herself slump to the ground, then looked between the leaves at the white puffs of clouds floating overhead without the slightest care. Anywhere the wind blew was a part of their domain. They had no chains or mortal lives to hold them back from going wherever they willed, and yet they never strayed from the blue folds of the sky.

She wondered if these same clouds had passed over her home in their wanderings. If they had, then maybe Tsuboku had seen them too—

Her chest _burned_.

The feeling passed in less than a second. Snarling, she grasped the chain in clenched fists. Enough of this! She had been tied down here for long enough, she would not spend any longer in this viper's nest that had seen to the deaths of so many in its walls!

But before she could pull the blasted thing out, a small hand came down to rest on her arm.

At any other time, she would have drawn a kunai and cut the offending appendage off. Taken by surprise in the middle of an enemy village while she wore the standard chunin garments of a ninja from Hidden Stone, it was an instinctive reaction and the only reasonable one.

At any other time, she would have done that. But now, she only stared at that child's hand and remembered another boy tugging at her sleeve with hands just like that.

The boy beside her at that moment wasn't Tsuboku, didn't even look remotely like him, but that brief hesitation was just long enough for rational thought to kick in and override the natural reaction. The boy was bent over panting, his spiky yellow hair hiding his face in that position, and he seemed to be using her arm as much for support as anything else. Hardly threatening.

He was dressed in the strangest clothing she had ever seen: an austere black robe somewhere between adorable and comical on a body that small, trimmed in bright orange and with a sash of the same color tied around the middle. There was a single kunai tucked beneath that belt, the handle wrapped in—it seemed to be a recurring theme—orange cloth. He was leaning on her with his right hand, so if he wanted to take it out he would have to either shift his weight off her first or reach across with his other hand, both extremely obvious movements that she would notice the moment he tried.

And she could stop him before he finished. She could _touch_ him! He could touch _her_! She searched him for a chain—maybe it was hidden under his robe? Or was it just a feature unique to her?

He finally managed to catch his breath and straightened up. The first thing she noticed about his face was his eyes, which were a startlingly clear blue. It was well-known that, while her village hated all Fire Country citizens equally, Leaf ninja with blue eyes and blond hair carried a special place in their hearts.

But she was inexplicably glad to see that outside of eye color the boy had very few similarities to the Leaf's devil. Even accounting for the baby fat, his features were softer, and he had what seemed to be a clan marking in the form of three thin lines on either cheek that put her in mind of whiskers.

"Made it in time," he said, still huffing. He was definitely talking to her. The last time anybody had talked to her was when... a while ago. "How long have you been here, neesan?"

She didn't know how long she had been in Konoha for, but she didn't think he was asking about that. Either way, she brushed aside his question. He seemed to know something about her (their?) situation, so she should get whatever information she cou— she should politely ask for whatever information he was willing to give.

"Are you... like me?" she questioned.

"Kinda, but not really," said the boy. "I'm hard to explain, I don't totally get it myself, 'ttebayo. But you know what you are, neesan, right?"

She gave a stiff, jerky nod, her eyes involuntarily finding the chain again.

"Oh, good," said the boy. He paused for a second, and then she couldn't help but tense when sat down next to her, staying at a distance just shy of contact. "A lot of them won't believe it. It's hard, and it hurts, but hiding from the truth doesn't help anyone. If you accept it you can try to fix it."

Fix it. There was no fixing this situation for her. When she saw herself sitting in the hated metal chair, jaw slack and head lolled to the side, her fingers and bare toes still giving little twitches and kicks as the poison coursed through her body, she had tried, she had tried so hard, and she might as well not have for all the results she garnered.

"What's your name, kid?"

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I'm going to be Hokage!" he announced.

The tone he used was more appropriate to statements declaring the color of the sky, so it took a moment for the words to register. He spoke again before a laugh could bubble out of her throat. "How 'bout you, neesan?"

The mirth stayed even through her next words. "I'm Kyoro Ran, and I'm dead. Nothing as grand as becoming Hokage."

"What if you weren't dead?"

Well, if that wasn't obvious. "If I weren't dead I'd burn this rotten village to the ground."

Uzumaki startled. "Why?"

"Same reason as a forest fire. Kill everything and maybe the next one'll learn better." She bared her teeth. "This village as it is doesn't deserve to live."

The boy stared at her, uncomprehending. She didn't regret disillusioning him from whatever cotton candy fantasy-land he'd built his home up into in his mind as she gestured sharply towards the street. "Look at that. All smiles and sunshine, is that what you think this place is? Is that what you think a ninja village is? Konoha pretends it's nice and friendly but under the surface you're just as bad as us, the only difference is you're better at hiding it! You're going to lead the monsters in this hellhole? Go ahead! Please do! I wish you the _best_ of luck! And I hope Stone kills every last damn one of you in the next war!"

Uzumaki's eyes were wide, but his expression was as if he had just realized something important. She scowled at him, wondering if he had even listened to her or if she had been talking to air again, same as she'd done for the past four days.

"Is that what you want?" he asked seriously. "Would it make you feel better if that happened?"

"Yes!" she snapped through the sudden terrible ache in her chest. "Yes it would!"

He cocked his head to the side, regarding her through eyes the same shade as Konoha's devil had sported. Finally, he said, "Okay."

She blinked. "What?"

"It'd make you happy, right, Ran-neesan?" Uzumaki said. He stood up, coming barely past her head. "I can affect the living world a little like this, 'ttebayo. Not a lot, but it doesn't take a lot of force to cut a person. They can't cut me back, either. So..." He considered, then nodded. "I can do it."

She gaped at him. Did he know what he was saying? No, he was at least six, that was more than old enough to understand death and stealing lives. He understood every word that had just come out of his mouth, and he meant just as many of them.

Uzumaki took a step towards the street. She recovered enough from her shock to snag his wrist before he could go any further.

He looked over his shoulder in surprise. She swallowed through a dry throat and said, not at all hoarsely, "You don't even _know_ me, Naruto-kun."

"I know what'll make you happy," said the child.

She looked past him, to the content people living their normal, burdened lives who made up the bustle on the street. She remembered the metal chair and the stink of her own blood and pain and helpless rage, and wondered how many of those people living normal lives knew that a woman had died beneath their feet four days ago as they laughed and traded gossip with each other. She wondered how many of those who knew cared.

Then she brought her gaze back to Uzumaki, and even though they looked nothing alike at all she couldn't help but think of a brown-eyed boy in Stone who tugged at her sleeve when he spotted a rare lizard on a wall and got into fights with older bullies who went after his best friend and chased her around the flat after she picked all the green candies out of the jar. He would care when she didn't come back. He wouldn't cry, he had promised his father he would be the man of the house and according to him real men didn't cry, but he would care.

"No," she croaked. "That's— not what I want."

"But you said—"

" _No._ I... I say things I don't mean sometimes, okay? It's a bad habit, don't copy me. Sit down."

She dragged him back to the ground. He complied without resisting.

"It doesn't have to be that way," he said fiercely, leaning forward. "There's no reason what you see of Konoha right now can't be the full truth. Smiles and sunshine, like you said. The shadows only exist because we _let_ them. I'll change it when I become Hokage. This village will never have to hide anything ever again."

She smiled weakly. His earlier offer had been enough of a shock that even these heretical claims couldn't touch her anymore. "I'd like to see that."

"You will," he said. "Not in this life, but I promise you will, 'ttebayo, and I _never_ go back on a promise!"

"I believe you," she said, and was surprised to find it wasn't totally a lie. He'd try, if nothing else.

"But that can't be all," said Naruto. Good graces, there was _more_? He'd only just pledged to dismantle the system their entire world was built upon, how could there possibly be more? "What do you want, Ran-neesan?"

She could only shake her head. She thought she had wanted revenge, but when someone had handed it to her on a silver platter she had turned it down. What did she want? Did she want anything at all? She was dead, after all. What could a dead person want?

Uncle Tsuba had wanted something. Lying on the hospital bed, his breath dusting a bone-white frost against the respirator, he had asked for—

"Tsuboku," she whispered. Her chest ached, and she half-thought she saw the chain stir at the sound.

"Tsuboku," Naruto repeated. He treated the name gently, as if it was a priceless heirloom she had entrusted to him. "Is he your family?"

"My cousin," she said. _My brother. My son._

"It's gonna be a long wait, but you'll see him again if it's what will make you happy," said Uzumaki. "You'll see each other whenever he finally decides to join you."

She looked him in the eye. "Promise me."

"I promise," said Naruto. "I'm not allowed to tell you how the afterlife works, but you'll know it's the truth when you get there."

"You mean this isn't the afterlife?"

"You're a spirit who doesn't have powers or a physical body right now, Ran-neesan," said Naruto. "That's really, _really_ not normal. Most people just move on. They don't linger unless they have regrets that can't be fulfilled," he made a vague gesture, " _after_. "

"You aren't human," she guessed. He knew far too much. "What _are_ you?"

He grinned. "I'm the future Hokage, 'ttebayo! But we're helping you right now, so don't change the subject. There has to be something else you want."

"I can't think of anything," she said.

Naruto hummed thoughtfully. "Do you know what your chain is tied to?"

"It's tied to..." She trailed off. Just fifteen minutes earlier she had been certain the thing led down to the iron chair, but now she was less sure.

The boy got up again and gripped the chain loosely. She shivered at the contact without knowing why. "Wait here and whatever you do, _don't_ pull on it, Ran-neesan."

Then he closed his eyes, face scrunching up in concentration, and between one blink and the next he had vanished on the wind.

Something on the other side pulled then, but unlike every time she had tugged on it herself this didn't elicit any pain. She watched as her legs sank into the dirt, followed by her torso and her shoulders and her neck. She got one last glimpse of green grass right in front of her face before she was entirely underground.

It was nothing like traveling through the earth on her own. For one, she had no control over her momentum. On top of that, she didn't need to breathe, her passage didn't disturb the soil, and she couldn't tell what was happening on the surface or around her. All of her senses were muted entirely.

The journey ended before she could really start panicking. She landed on her feet in a long, freezing cold, dimly lit room whose only decorations were cabinets lining the walls and identical, evenly spaced tables laid out in rows across the entire area. Nearly all of the tables had a lumpy object on them covered by a thin sheet. It didn't take any imagination to figure out what was underneath them.

The only living people there—well, for a certain definition of living, anyway—were her and Naruto. They stood beside one of the tables. Her chain led beneath the sheet, to what she could tell was the head.

"It's alright if you don't want to look," said Naruto, sounding uncertain for the first time.

She took a deep breath, reached for the sheet, and lifted. Her fingers passed right through the cheap fabric without so much as making it shift.

"Okay then," said Naruto. He clenched both his own hands around the rim and pulled back with a monumental effort, digging the immaterial heels of his straw sandals into the floor for purchase. It took a few moments, but finally, after much grunting and heaving, the sheet slid back enough to reveal Kyoro Ran's face.

Seeing her own blank features made her feel uncomfortably empty, so she looked instead for the other end of the chain.

When she saw what it was, she froze.

The chain itself was tarnished and rusting on that end, the links eaten away nearly to the point of disconnection. It wrapped tightly around the metal plate of her forehead protector, entirely concealing the symbol of her home beneath it.

Her home...

Her last regret. In retrospect, it was painfully obvious.

"I want to go home."

She knew it was impossible even as she said it. She was chained to Konoha, trapped at the site of her death as an invisible wisp. She couldn't even lift a sheet thin enough to see through. Going home wasn't an option anymore.

Something broke inside her. On her corpse, the other end of the chain began to dissolve in earnest, red-crusted iron flaking away little by little to dissolve against her forehead protector.

"Ran-neesan!" A child's panicked voice tried to penetrate the haze that began to surround her mind. " _Neesan!_ "

Someone yanked at her sleeve. She looked down. Though oddly distorted, the boy looked somehow familiar. She cast her mind through the fog clouding her memory, through the pain that felt like there was a hole being gouged out of her heart, and tried to remember. This was important. The boy, whoever he was, was _important_. She had to know his name.

"Tsu..." she started, and then stopped. Her voice sounded different, almost as if there were two of her speaking just slightly out of sync—maybe there were, there did seem to be that many of her. The one who was her, and the one lying on the table as if she was—

—sleeping. She was sleeping. Eyes closed, breaths light ( enough so that she couldn't hear them, couldn't see the chest rising and falling beneath the thin blanket), features relaxed, what else could it be?

Another tug on her sleeve, more urgent this time. The name, yes, she had to remember the name. She couldn't forget. She _could not_ forget. It was... "Tsu... Tsubo— _ku_. Tsubo... ku. Tsuboku. Tsuboku."

"Neesan," said Tsuboku. He sounded scared. That wasn't right. He shouldn't sound scared. Tsuboku couldn't sound scared. She wouldn't _let_ him, she wouldn't let _anyone_ , was it those bullies again those doctors they dared she would _kill she would ea_ —

"Neesan," said Tsuboku firmly. She broke off whatever unimportant train of thought she had been following to listen attentively. "Neesan... I'm Tsuboku. You— you got home from a mission. Your mission. Just now, you got back from it. You promised we could go out for dinner. For... ramen. You promised ramen, and you _never_ go back on a promise, especially not a promise about ramen, 'ttebayo! Where are we going to get ramen?"

Ramen? Tsuboku usually dragged her to a different pizzeria every time she got back from a mission that lasted more than a few days, but if he wanted ramen today then they were damn well getting ramen.

"There's a small cafe near the Academy," she said slowly, trying to remember. "One tower to the west, two levels down from the crossing. Next to the dango place. Mako-sensei took our team there once. Ruichi ordered ramen, I think. He said it was good, but they skimped on the beef."

"What did you order?" asked Tsuboku.

"I don't know," she answered. That wasn't acceptable. Tsuboku looked up to her, she couldn't _not know_ something! "It was years ago, we were all still genin, Ruichi was still alive even, I can't remember, I'll remember in a second just I need a second I'll remember—"

"It's okay, Neesan, it's okay, I was just curious," said Tsuboku. "It's not important. Don't worry about it. What does the cafe look like?"

"It's— it's a cafe," she said, bemused. What did any cafe look like? It was dark and shady, the kind of place Mako-sensei with his cat eyes favored, and thick with aromas. Round, wobbling tables and stools filled the space. Every table had a metal carton with disposable bamboo chopsticks and every other table had a bottle of soy sauce. The staff were disinterested—they set down the food, they went back to the kitchen or the front, the ones in the kitchen chatted amiably with each other as they worked whenever the boss was manning the counter. There were a few seats outside, too, these slightly less unbalanced than the indoor ones. It was shabby, but the food was honest, edible Rock Country fare, and it offered all the traditional dishes as well as a few more recent ones, the latter category being the one pizza and ramen belonged in.

"We're at the front gates," said Tsuboku. The southeast gate, set at ground level and easily visible and defensible from nearly any part of the village. "How do we get to the cafe?"

From there he guided her through the entire village. They had dinner, and then they explored. All their favorite parks, her old team's homes, the Academy, what seemed like every place in the village that sold desserts (she sneaked off in the middle without telling him to pick up more money from the flat), Tsuboku's friend Tokage's apartment, Uncle Tsuba and Aunt Mimi's graves, her own parents' graves, the missions office, the Tsuchikage's office (they were let in without a fuss once she told them it was because of Tsuboku), the training grounds she frequented. At one point it started sleeting while they were in a park, and while taking shelter under a pavilion they bumped into her old friend from the Academy who she hadn't seen or spoken to since they got sorted into different teams by the graduation exam.

Somehow they made it home just before it got dark. Tsuboku was still hungry, so they made both of their favorites—trout pizza for him, gooseberry crumble for herself. They relaxed at home until she decided it had been long enough since their last meal to take showers. Finally, they went to bed.

She blinked, and she was back in the storage room. The body was covered up again. The only person with her was Naruto.

It didn't matter. For just a few hours she had been back home, and that was enough.

* * *

With bated breath the young soul reaper watched the spirit of his home village's enemy fade away. Only when even the outline had vanished did he let himself collapse into a shaking huddle on the ground. He buried his face in his knees to wait for the cold fear that had filled his heart the last five hours to ebb away.

"I didn't know if that would work," Naruto whispered. His throat burned, and he swallowed back the tears before they could escape. He couldn't remember the last time he had been so scared. "Her chain was _gone_ at the end, I could see the hole."

" _What are you whining for? You caught it before that happened."_

"But it was so _close_. She nearly—"

" _Are you a parrot? Quit spouting 'nearly' like it's a free excuse to give me a headache, ne? We managed it. Somehow. That's all that matters."_

He laughed shakily. As if his zanpakuto hadn't been just as anxious as him about the decay slowly creeping up the chain and the way Ran's voice couldn't decide whether it should echo or not.

" _She wasn't a bad person."_

Naruto rubbed the water out of his eyes and looked up. From where he was, he could only see the bottom of the cold metal table that held an Iwa chunin's corpse.

 _No. She wasn't._


	2. Chapter 1

The kid wasn't dead.

The kid... _was_ dead.

One or the other.

Ichigo was usually good at telling ghosts apart from their living counterparts. Even ignoring the chain dangling out every dead spirit's chest, they also had a distinctive casual lack of regard for such minor physical obstructions as walls, cars, subways, collapsing buildings. People. That last was the major indicator, more than anything else: a man who, at least from the back, looked utterly normal would be standing in the middle of the highway between lanes and not a single driver would even look at him, a favor which he would return with perfect candidness. They were desperate, also; some of them were better at hiding it, but spirits in general were constantly anxious. Ichigo'd asked several people about it, but all they could say was that they felt vulnerable and exposed without knowing why.

In other words, ghosts carried plenty of peculiarities that set them apart from the living. These traits came in varying degrees of severity, but the commonality was that _all_ ghosts carried _all_ of them. They didn't mix-and-match.

So he was having a hard time figuring out the kid. The boy, blue eyes and spiked yellow hair aside (not that Ichigo had any room to talk), didn't look that weird: no heavy length of chain trailing from his front or anything. His fashion choice was bizarre—he was wrapped in a black robe, with a dangerously sharp trowel tucked under the orange sash, and had on a pair of woven straw sandals—but Ichigo knew there was a cosplay convention happening downtown sometime that week.

But he was acting like a ghost. He walked by a telephone pole nearly close enough to brush it with his shoulder without so much as a glance over. A woman and a dog headed past him without any form of acknowledgement from either party. The tall, scowling teenager's unsubtle stalking had yet to elicit any change in behavior.

Yet when a car drove by, the kid startled badly enough to reach for the trowel, resting his hand loosely around the orange-wrapped handle and watching the vehicle with wide eyes until after it turned down the next corner. Not a ghost's reaction, that. (Not most living people's either. But one mystery first.)

With anyone else, he might have simply gone up and asked, but in this case the thought had barely crossed his mind that he dismissed it. If he was a spirit, then it could be dangerous to approach—Ichigo wasn't soon going to forget the _other_ child he hadn't been sure about. The sky was clear today, and the nearest river was several miles away, and he was... alone, but. No.

If he was living, then Ichigo needed to help him track down his parents and make sure they knew it wasn't acceptable to let their kid son wander unattended through an unfamiliar neighborhood. Either way, he needed to know, and for that to happen he needed to act first. He would compromise.

From half a block away, he called, "Hey! Blonde kid in the robe!"

Said kid's steps faltered. Slowly, he turned around, looking up at Ichigo with his brow scrunched up in bemusement. He glanced behind himself, as if checking to make sure Ichigo wasn't addressing some other yellow-haired boy in black robes, then back to Ichigo.

"Me?" he shouted in return.

"You, yeah! Are you alive?"

The kid _stared_.

Eventually, "No!"

"Oh," said Ichigo. The kid's voice was high-pitched, trapped at an age before girls' and boys' voices began to split. His body, as far as Ichigo could tell, was thankfully umarked, so probably an illness or an unlucky head injury. Suffocation, if he really wanted to follow such a line of thought. "You need anything?"

The kid was grinning. Ichigo recognized the look. Every ghost wore it when they realized that one of the living could see them, that they could finally talk to someone and expect an answer back after days of begging in vain for someone to please just acknowledge their existence. It was the main reason Ichigo didn't ignore ghosts, even after fifteen years of them intruding on his life at the worst times at the slightest word or gesture in their direction; he was willing to bear a little inconvenience and annoyance if it meant he could put that expression on someone's face.

The girl by the riverside hadn't smiled that way.

Ichigo relaxed just a little. That meant he didn't reflexively punch the kid's lights out when a round face with three thin lines drawn on either cheek suddenly took up Ichigo's entire field of vision.

" _Holy_ —"

"You don't have weird eyes," the kid said curiously, completely ignoring Ichigo's panicked flailing. "D'you have a demon?"

Ichigo took a few hurried steps back to where he couldn't feel the kid's breath on the bridge of his nose. "What kind of question is that? And— how are you floating?"

Contrary to popular belief, ghosts did not float. They could jump rather high and stay in the air for longer than was physically possible, but that wasn't the same as hovering two feet off the ground as if it was solid earth rather than gas beneath his sandals.

"I'm _standing_ ," he enunciated, clearly amused at Ichigo's expense. He had a heavy but unplaceable accent. "So do ya?"

The scowl made its hasty return. "No."

"But you c'n see me. Only..." His tongue poked out of his mouth as he counted something on his fingers. "Gaara-kun, Fuu-neechan, Nii-neesan, Kakashi... Ringo-san. Er, you're not dying or 'nything, are you?"

"No," Ichigo said again. "Is that a list of the people who can see you?" If it was, then Ichigo's ability was a lot more common than he'd been led to believe. They'd all have to be around Karakura Town, too—spirits not tied down to one place all seemed to vanish within a week or so, and even though that was more than enough time to board a plane to France or someplace, they never liked to roam too far from their place of death.

"Well, Ringo-san could only see me right after I saved her from drowning and then she couldn't anymore," and then he added as an afterthought in the same breath, "I'm Naruto."

A pause as Ichigo reoriented: he'd been devoting more attention to trying to figure the kid out than listening to his actual words, so the non sequitur caught him off guard. "Ichigo."

"I'm from the other world. D'you know how I can get back?"

"To the afterlife?"

Naruto thought about it, scrunching his eyes nearly shut. "It's hard to explain—I don't really get it—but there's two worlds and they're opposites of each other. Kind of. Flipsides? I don't know. I'm trying ta get back, but I can't find a hollow that'll stop attacking me long enough to help."

"So," said Ichigo slowly, parsing out what he could of that nonsensical outburst. "You're not really dead?"

"I'm dead!" said Naruto, completely insouciant.

"I've never seen a soul without a chain."

"I'm a different _kind_ of dead," he clarified, as if that explained anything at all. "Hey, do you know where I can find a hollow? This place is interesting an' all—an' weird—but if I don't get back soon Gaara-kun might... er. It won't be good if he thinks I left on my own without telling him."

Well, it wasn't like he didn't have time to spare in helping. Yuzu would understand if he got home late and leave a plate out for him to heat up. The kid sounded a little off his rocker—Ichigo'd seen similar before, when the shock of death hit someone so hard that they grasped onto any explanation they could in order to cope—but he wasn't about to abandon a kid to deal with his death on his own.

"I don't know where they are, but I'll search with you," Ichigo offered.

"Really?" His face lit up completely, a bright grin stretching across the whole of it. "Thanks, oniisan!"

"What's it look like?"

"Ya've never seen a hollow before?" he asked, as if Ichigo had just asked him what ramen was. "But— you can see _ghosts_ , can't you? How come you don't—" He broke off, staring at Ichigo. "Oh."

"What?"

"If there's more people with reiryoku here then they probably wouldn't go after you," Naruto recited. "Nii-neesan has _way_ more reiryoku and they still only try ta eat her sometimes."

"Eat her? Like—" He bit himself off and pretended to be watching a black cat lounging on the nearest house's windowsill as a gaggle of middle schoolers biked past. Once they'd made it out of hearing range he picked the question back up. "You mean like a zombie? Or a monster?"

"Like both! They _used_ ta be people, and _now_ they're monsters, so it's like zombies except they're dead-dead, not walking-dead, 'ttebayo. 'Ey've all got these big white masks, and there's a hole where their chain was and all they want to do is eat people to fill in the hole 'cept they can't but they're still hungry so they have to eat people even though it doesn't help. The big ones are only a little taller than me, but they're still dangerous because living people aren't expecting them and dead people don't have chatra so they aren't strong enough to break the hollows' masks on their own."

The hand gestures had been distracting enough that Ichigo'd only gotten about every fifth word. It was enough to get the gist of it. "And— you're _looking_ for one," said Ichigo flatly.

Naruto shrugged. "Well, unless you can open gargantas what else 'm I supposed to do?"

Ichigo rolled his eyes. "Quit throwing out random words like you expect me to know what you're talking about."

A sheepish grin, followed by zero attempts to explain. "They're not super common, but in a city this big we should be okay. You coming, oniisan?"

"To look for hollows, right?" said Ichigo. "Yeah, sure."

Naruto hopped down to the sidewalk and started off down the street in the direction he'd originally been going. Ichigo hefted his backpack and stepped in beside him. He thought he'd have to slow down to let the kid keep up, but there turned out to be no need for it. Each of Naruto's strides took him farther than should have been possible; it looked nearly like he was skating across the pavement.

Ichigo was... less certain now that they wouldn't find anything. The description of the monsters was still far-fetched—while Ichigo didn't know for sure what happened to ghosts whose chains finished eroding, he'd always assumed that it meant they would just move on; turning into masked spiritual cannibalistic monsters had certainly never crossed his mind—but it was also more detailed than anything he'd heard from the other slightly delusional spirits.

The kid himself was odd, too. Putting the obvious aside, he also didn't act like someone who'd just died. He'd been downright cheerful about announcing the fact, and then he'd only been surprised that _Ichigo_ could see him, not that there were people with the ability to perceive spirits in the first place. He'd even met at least five people before who could do it...

Wait.

Spirits couldn't affect the living world. Naruto claimed to have saved one of the people who'd been able to see him. It didn't take a genius to figure out something wasn't adding up.

Ichigo kept a surreptitious eye on the kid for any sign that he was interacting with anything physical, but he didn't get an opportunity to confirm. There wasn't enough wind that day to toss up leaves and the sidewalk was clean of litter to step on. While Naruto was undoubtedly walking strangely—even ignoring the distance he covered, there was the fact that his feet kept landing at arbitrary elevations without ever touching the pavement—that probably didn't count as the same thing.

"Naruto," Ichigo said.

The kid spun around in front of him and started skipping backwards to keep his gaze on Ichigo, paper-thin speckles of nearly-clear pink marking briefly the spots he stopped at. With every step his feet came down slightly higher, which quickly brought him up to eye level. It was more than a little bizarre to watch.

"What kind of dead are you?" Ichigo wouldn't usually ask something that seemingly insensitive, but Naruto had brought up the tidbit earlier so offhandedly and with so little hesitation that Ichigo didn't think he would mind the question now.

"I'm not that much different from everyone else," Naruto deflected. "I just stayed behind to help other people move on. 'S all." He whirled back around to face forward, locking his fingers behind his head and leaning back into them. "Sometimes people bring too much weight with them when they go down. So. I finish what they couldn't. You know what I'm talking about, right, Ichigo-oniisan?"

Ichigo was silent for a while before he answered. "Yeah. I do." He did the same thing, after all. "You've been here for a long time, haven't you?"

"Yup!" He glanced back at Ichigo, just enough for the teen to catch the corner of a grin and one near-closed eye. "More 'an long enough ta get over death-shock, even."

Ichigo stopped. Naruto wasted no time in following suit and pivoting again to face him, and this time that cheerful smile had an edge to it. "You've got permission ta believe me now, 'ttebayo."

What a _brat_. Karin at her worst didn't even come close to this kid.

Still, priorities: if he was sane, then all that about the zombie monsters called hollows might actually be true.

"So we're looking for a hollow," Ichigo said slowly.

Nod.

"What are you going do when we find a hollow?"

"Make it take me home," said Naruto. "It was a hollow that brought me away, so another one should be able ta get me back there."

"Back to the afterlife."

Naruto frowned. "No, back to _my_ world, not— Right, so, there's your world—that's this—" he made a broad gesture around them, "—and there's my world, which— _isn't_ this. And my afterlife's not your afterlife."

"You're from a different dimension," Ichigo stated, not quite believing the words coming out of his own mouth.

He seemed to be right, though, because the kid brightened again. "Yeah!"

"And hollows can... travel between dimensions." Masked spiritual cannibalistic _dimension-hopping_ monsters. Why not?

"They can open gargantas to and from Hueco Mundo. Hueco Mundo's the hollows' world, 'ttebayo. It connects our worlds together, like a bridge, except it's a bridge with hollows in it—"

"Alright, I've got it," Ichigo cut in before Naruto could extend that metaphor and muddle up his explanation even further. "Where do you fit in?"

Naruto cocked his head, blinking. Sounding genuinely bewildered, he answered, "I'm me, 'ttebayo."

Ichigo looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. He wanted badly to know, but more than that, he didn't feel like pressing a little kid for the circumstances of his death when he obviously didn't wish to talk about it.

"I guess it's my turn!" said Naruto. He pointed at the telephone lines above them. "What're those for? They look like they're for walking on, but I've only seen crows using 'em."

"For _walking_ on? Only if someone wants to get shocked to death."

"Oh, they're for _defense_." Naruto squinted up at them, frowning in concentration.

"Uh." Ichigo gave him an odd look. "They're telephone lines. Wait— your… dimension doesn't have telephones?"

"Nu-uh."

"They let people talk to each other long-distance," Ichigo explained shortly.

"Real-time?" At Ichigo's nod, Naruto pressed on, "You can talk to someone from across a _city_ that way?"

"Across the world, actually. It's just that long-distance calls are more expensive."

For a few seconds Naruto just gaped, wide-eyed. "But—! _Anyone_ can—?" he spluttered. "How long d'your wars last, 'ttebayo?"

Ichigo said blankly, "What?"

"If you c'n react to attacks and stuff _immediately_ then nothing'll ever end, it'll just get bigger faster and, and everyone else'll know just 's fast as you do, 'ttebayo, and 'ey'll always know where most of your ninja are and 'ey'll always have to kill _everyone_ 'cause any one survivor c'n pass on the message—"

"What kind of place are you _from_?" Ichigo asked, more than a little perturbed by how quickly Naruto's thoughts had leaped to outright war. It might explain the dangerously sharp trowel he was carrying, but— the kid was _six_. Five. Somewhere thereabouts, at any rate.

Had been six.

No. There weren't any more signs of a violent death now than there had been a few seconds ago. But there were plenty of ways to commit murder without leaving any outward mark.

Naruto stared at him, the pencil-thin lines on his cheeks stark against his ashen skin. "You don't use 'em for fighting?" As if it was an alien concept.

No phones, and Naruto's weapon was a simple bladed one improvised out of a trowel. Still not necessarily technologically behind, if the more advanced tools were restricted to their militaries, or, with their mindset, if they _destroyed_ innovations because all they could think about was how much easier they would make it for the other sides to take lives.

Baseless speculation later. Reassure the kid first. He shelved the guesswork for when he had more information and knew what a different dimension actually meant. "We do, but—" Ichigo hesitated, wondering just how to explain. He settled with, "Wars don't last any longer now than they did before we had phones. Normal people use them to talk with friends and family, or for business."

"...You're weird," said Naruto, but color was returning to his face.

Ichigo bit down on the obvious retort with a massive effort.

"So what're those things? The really fast boxes with wheels?"

Naruto didn't take to cars the way he had to phones, more fascinated than horrified by their concept. Apparently in the other dimension, the only neutrally aligned country on Naruto's continent held a monopoly over the distribution of iron and most other useful metals, so any attempt to mass produce steel vehicles that only worked on flat surfaces, no matter how fast they were or how much they could carry, would be a laughable waste of precious material. Gasoline was an incendiary that had a dozen more versatile and accessible alternatives, and inflatable wheels and rubber just confused him.

It turned out Naruto had seen cell phones at some point too, and the explanation for those inevitably linked to a mention of satellites, and space, and from there somehow to Japan's international relations onward to the Olympics and football and public education. Then to Karakura's rampant gangs and where Ichigo stood with them (which came down to wherever Ichigo was standing, they weren't), and from there to Ichigo's trigonometry grade, at which point he drew the line and asked for information from Naruto's side so it could at least resemble a fair trade.

Naruto was willing to share, happily giving him a basic rundown of the Elemental Countries and the ninja system that governed them, but the moment Ichigo asked for specifics the kid started playing dumb. "Specifics" included things like if they _literally_ ran up walls and raised dragons out of water, was he waxing poetic when he said the Fourth Hokage had sold his soul to the Shinigami to slay a kaijuu-esque nine-tailed fox (which was Ichigo's original inclination, until Naruto mentioned that it had only happened ten years ago), and what was this chatra or chakra thing he kept mentioning.

He seemed genuinely surprised by that last question, though. "Ya don't know what chakra is?"

"I'm asking, aren't I?"

"You probably just have a different name for it, 'ttebayo," said Naruto. "It's life force."

"Ki," Ichigo realized.

Naruto cocked his head. "Probably!"

But Naruto spoke about chakra like it was as important and prevalent as blood, while ki, even before it became nearly a niche belief, hadn't ever been something that could kill a person who didn't have enough of it. Certainly nobody had ever fainted and gotten carted to his dad's clinic for ki exhaustion.

Naruto suddenly stumbled. Ichigo reached out to him, but he caught himself on his own and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at Ichigo with wide eyes.

"You alright?" Ichigo asked uncertainly.

" _I—_ " A hissing intake of breath. "'m fine. _I'm_ fine. Ya don't feel different, oniisan?"

"Why would I?"

"Your reiryoku's— Look, can ya see this?" He flicked a finger towards the stop sign on the corner, sending out a scattering of crimson sparks that dissolved nearly immediately. They were the same color as the platforms he made to walk on—which was strange, because Ichigo remembered thinking thirty minutes ago that the kid was levitating.

He stared at the space where the sparks had vanished. "I couldn't before."

"Nah," Naruto agreed. "People's reiryoku grow if I hang around 'em for too long, but it usually takes a few weeks at least, and I've known Haku for two years and he still can't hear me. It doesn't happen in an _hour_ , 'ttebayo."

"You couldn't have mentioned this earlier?"

"Didn't think it'd come up. But," a predatory gleam entered his eye, "this is a good thing! I can't be the only one that felt 'at spike, which means we're gonna get company pretty— ah, there we go."

With no warning, a scream that didn't belong under sunlight tore through the sky.

Ichigo gritted his teeth and covered his ears, but the multilayered shriek bored straight into his ears regardless and pressed down on his shoulders as a physical weight. It seemed to coming from every direction at once, filling the space between every molecule of air for miles around.

Finally it died away, just in time for a monster to land on the other side of the intersection, the sound of its impact overshadowed by the fading echoes of the scream.

There really wasn't any other word for it but monster. Its back legs and webbed feet were minuscule compared to its hulking body, while the fists it braced against the ground were each as tall as Naruto. Its skin was pure black, including the inside of the perfect circular hole that ran through its chest. A horned bone mask that barely resembled a crying face covered every part of its head but its nostrils and glaring yellow eyes.

The first thought that flitted through Ichigo's head at the sight was that he felt bad for its spine.

"Wow, you're really big!" said Naruto, looking the twelve-foot hollow over. He didn't sound too worried.

The hollow leaned its face closer to their level. Ichigo startled when recognizable words echoed out from behind the mask. "I came expecting to find a _very_ tasty living soul, but a death god also? Oh, what a—"

" _Shinigami_?" Naruto repeated shrilly. "Whadda ya mean, Shinigami? I am _not_!"

"Denying it won't save you, little—"

"I'm not the Shinigami!" He turned his back on the hollow to demand of Ichigo, "Do I look like some hairy old demon to you? I'm wearing black!"

"What are you going—"

Naruto rounded on the hollow again. "I'm Naruto, 'ttebayo, and don't you forget it!"

"I don't care about dead—"

Naruto pounded a fist into his palm, demeanor shifting without transition into eagerness. "Oh right, I need ta ask ya something first. Can ya make a garganta ta—"

"Interrupt me again," the hollow snarled, slaver dripping from behind its mask to steam against the pavement, "and I will ensure that you never find peace in your—"

"Look, just let me finish first, okay?" said Naruto with such well-feigned impatience that Ichigo actually believed it for half a second. He might have been more prepared to admire the artistry if the kid wasn't busy confirming all his earlier doubts about his sanity. "I get it if you're too useless to make one, but I need a garganta to the other living world and I don't really feel like hunting down another hollow today."

With a howl, the monster lunged.

In a single practiced motion, Naruto slipped a finger through the ring on the end of his trowel, drew it and spun it a few times, and closed his hand around the orange wrappings in a loose grip. Then he blurred forwards to ram the weapon's ring against the forehead of the hollow's mask, stopping it dead in place before it had even moved a foot.

There was no time to react before a red pressure descended that tore all the air from Ichigo's lungs. He staggered, only keeping himself from falling to his knees by catching himself against the stop sign. What even...

The hollow let out a low moan and sank trembling to the ground, its arms jerking in spastic twitches as it tried and failed to push itself upright again.

"I inn't asking for a lot here, hollow-san," Naruto said clearly without any inflection, but the pressure thickened his voice into something hard and rough. He stood casually above them as if he didn't even feel the weight. Ichigo could barely draw breath. "I wouldn't mind an answer sometime soon."

The hollow gurgled out a curse. "I'll—"

"No you won't," Naruto stated. "You're nearly unconsciousness just from my reiatsu. I haven't even called Chikai yet. If you walk away from here with your mask whole, it'll be because I _let_ ya, 'ttebayo." A pause. Ichigo took the moment to wonder at what the hell he was listening to. "Which I won't. But it's still your choice how much dignity you're gonna go out with. Help me, and I'll let ya fight back. Don't, and you can die groveling on the ground instead."

"No," said the hollow. "No, no, no, no, _no—_ "

Naruto hopped down to stand in easy reach of its clawed fists. He said nothing, only spun the weapon easily around between his small fingers.

Slowly the frantic muttering faded away, until the only sound left was an oblivious crow squawking from the next street over. And then the hollow said, "Only a hollow from that world can go there, or one that's eaten a hollow from that world."

Naruto stilled. "That's not going ta be easy," he muttered, then sighed. "Thank you, hollow-san."

Immediately the pressure lifted and the hazy scarlet tint to the air faded.

Ichigo's nerveless fingers lost their grip on the metal pole. He fell gracelessly to his knees and retched. The hollow's scream sounded muffled through the ringing in his ears, and maybe it was just him, but he remembered the first one going on for a lot longer.

He closed his eyes until he felt less like the capillaries in them were a hairsbreadth from bursting. When he finally looked back up, it was to see only Naruto crouched a short distance away. There was no trace of the hollow.

No need to ask where it had gone.

Ichigo pulled himself back to his feet. Naruto bounced a little on his toes and tilted his head to the side, looking up at the teenager.

" _What_ was that," said Ichigo.

The answer came without the slightest hesitation. "Nothing important! Thanks for helping me, Ichigo-oniisan, and sorry ya were here for that," Naruto said in a rush, as upbeat as if he wasn't admitting candidly to having used Ichigo for monster bait. "Can ya get home on your own?"

The sound that made its way out of Ichigo's throat wasn't quite a growl. "You don't get to just—"

Naruto smiled. "I'm _dead_ , oniisan. I can do whatever I want and it doesn't matter."

To prove his point, he raised one hand in a jaunty wave, and the next second all that remained of him was a splash of rapidly dissipating red dust.


	3. Chapter 2

Cats weren't so much more interesting than people. They ate, they slept, they walked, they lived, same as everything else. They weren't any more likely to see him either, so Naruto returned the favor and paid them no attention.

This one was doing something weird, though.

Naruto watched from the roof as the cat ran a paw over another section of the house. Reiatsu flared briefly, less intense than a pinprick even at so close a distance. The cat strode twelve paces down, left another invisible marking, moved on.

With each tiny spike, the bonfire that was Ichigo-oniisan simmered lower. The teenager's reiryoku wasn't steadily skyrocketing anymore, but it was already more than everyone else Naruto knew put together and was somehow still growing. Naruto'd already had to cut down nine hollows, all of them huge, towering things several times stronger than the kind he got back home. He was prepared to keep vigil the remainder of the night to make sure the guy didn't get eaten in his sleep or something.

" _Can't catch anything if the bait's dead, ne?"_

People weren't bait.

" _Whatever makes ya sleep better at night."_

He wasn't sleeping tonight anyway.

" _What's it feel like, to imagine you're a hero?"_

When he flashed down to the ground, the cat acknowledged him by turning its ear towards him. He slid a step back, eyes widening, and froze when the cat looked over, clear yellow eyes fixed on him.

It—no, she, the scent on the wind corrected—flicked her tail, then she set him aside and went back to her task. She swiped her paw over the yellow paint one last time. Immediately all the previous markings gave a sputtering burst before— not vanishing, but blending into the ambient spiritual noise. Ichigo-oniisan's reiryoku dropped down to a normal level in the same instant.

A startled yip. _"Bastard!"_

What?

" _Idiot! She cut off your hollow supply!"_

Oniisan _wasn't bait._ This wasn't fishing!

Dripping liberally with sarcasm: _"Well, bridges generally go 'ver water—"_

"That should hold for a while," the cat commented. Her voice held the deepness characteristic of animals forcing their throats into making human sounds with chakra.

"What did you do?" Naruto asked.

" _You don't need to talk! Just get rid of her and get back ta killing hollows already!"_

"Shielded the house," said the cat. "He'll light up again the minute he steps out, but it'll keep the hollows off his back for the rest of the night."

Naruto crossed his arms. "I was handling it."

" _You're an idiot."_

"I'm not denying that, but there's worse things than hollows that could have come looking."

" _But a cat would know so much about it, na?"_

"Like what?" Naruto asked dubiously.

"Bigger hollows, for one," said the cat. She stretched languidly, mouth yawning wide, then sat down and curled her long tail around her dark-furred feet. "Anyway, what were you going to do? Watch over him until his reiryoku fixes itself? Children need plenty of sleep to keep healthy, you know."

" _Hey, that cat's calling you stupid! You gonna do something about it?"_

He hadn't thought that far ahead, actually. Long-term planning had never been his strong suit, mostly because he'd never needed it. Fixing problems as they came worked pretty well every time.

" _What am I saying? Of course ya aren't. The beetle stole any guts you mighta had, ne, jellyfish?"_

"I'm not that little." Naruto dropped to crouch on the balls of his feet, partly to bring them to a slightly more even level and partly to emphasize his point. Even if his shoes had been touching the ground, the cat's ears would barely reach past his nose. "I'm bigger than you."

"It seems that way," said the cat, whiskers twitching.

"That's right, 'ttebayo." Naruto frowned, eyes closing to slits. "What are _you_ gonna do when oniisan leaves the house?"

"What makes you think I'll do anything?"

Naruto tilted his head slightly. He waited.

The cat's mouth opened enough to show the sharp tips of her fangs. On any other cat it would have been a frightened baring of teeth, but on her it was very clearly a grin.

Odd. Naruto'd seen summons and ninja animals use human mannerisms before, but showing teeth as a sign of amusement was exclusive to people. It was like how only civilians shook hands or bowed—ninja couldn't view casual contact with strangers or assuming an unbalanced position while exposing the back of the head as anything other than suicidal. Carnivores couldn't see grinning as anything other than overtly aggressive. They'd tolerate it from humans, sure, the same way ninja were okay with civilians shaking hands with each other, but they'd never do it themselves.

Therefore, the cat wasn't a cat. She also wasn't dead (if the lack of a chain hadn't already been proof enough), because only living people had chakra, and ninja techniques like transformation needed chakra. Yet whatever she had done to Ichigo-oniisan's home had used reiatsu, not chakra, even though Naruto couldn't feel any more reiatsu off her than the typical amount living souls exuded.

It'd been a long time since Naruto had so thoroughly not known something. He wasn't sure what to feel about it.

The smile showed a bit more teeth. "He's more dangerous to himself right now than the hollows are. If his reiryoku keeps growing at this rate, his physical body is going to break down."

Naruto reared back, eyes widening. "It's gonna— Wait, so he's— That can happen?"

"No, he's a special case," said the cat. "Certainly you instigated it by exposing him to your reiatsu, but you had no way of knowing."

"I—" Naruto's hand found the rough-wrapped hilt of his zanpakuto, and he ignored the immediate comment of " _What, I exist now?"_ "I wanted to talk to him."

The cat blinked up at him. "No need to take it so hard. It's easy enough to fix."

"How?"

"The only reason it's a problem is because the reiatsu his soul is generating is staying bottled up inside his body. We need to give it an outlet. Tomorrow afternoon when school lets out, if you want to be there."

"Yeah," said Naruto. "Okay. You know a lot about spirit stuff."

"Not enough to help you get home, unfortunately," said the cat.

A low growl reverberated through his mind. Naruto's gaze traced the curve of the cat's muzzle. He placed the shape with another black feline who'd been in hearing range during his and Ichigo's conversation.

Well, that was all right. He hadn't told Ichigo-oniisan anything dangerous. More importantly, she wasn't going to leave him dangling with just the knowledge that she'd eavesdropped: she had to be planning to follow up with what she wanted from him.

"But I know a man who might be able to."

He had to grin at that. He liked being right.

Also, it was starting to seem like everyone in this world could see ghosts. Okay, maybe not _everyone_ everyone, but back home, there were... Ringo-san had been the first, three months after the beetle hollow killed him, but she'd only been able to see him for a few hours after he rescued her. It'd been two years before he'd met a second, Nii-neesan.

Compared to here, where, in less than a day, he'd already found out about three. There had to be something in the water.

"Tomorrow afternoon when school lets out?" he guessed.

"I was thinking tonight, since he has a spare room with sleeping mats," said the cat, her voice a touch gruffer. "You could catch a cold out here."

"I like oniisan's roof," Naruto said. A lie for a lie. The roof had shingles, which were the worst roofing ever invented. He hadn't touched them, instead opting to stay in the air a few inches above. But just because Ichigo-oniisan's dad had terrible taste in houses didn't mean he and his family were terrible people, and Naruto knew how much he trusted the cat's reiatsu-concealing technique to hold.

" _Stupid thing hasn't even said her name."_

Oh, that was true. She wasn't a ninja animal, who didn't think to introduce themselves by name until someone else brought the matter up. A human withholding her identity while under a transformation technique was doing it deliberately.

"I won't push, in that case." She rose to her feet.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Yoruichi," she answered without the slightest hesitation. Whatever reason she'd been hiding her name for wasn't a problem anymore. A trust issue? That couldn't be it, Naruto wasn't acting too differently now than he'd been with Ichigo-oniisan. If he had done something that made her suspicious then she shouldn't feel any differently now.

Unless he _hadn't_ done anything, she'd been suspicious from the very beginning, and something he'd done had made her okay with him.

" _Don't ya_ dare _sit here and take that."_

He felt his smile stiffen at the edges. "Tails-san."

"Come again?"

"You're Tails-san," Naruto said. There was a common expression about a cat spirit always showing her tails eventually, left over from before the villages' foundings back when Matatabi-san would regularly disguise herself as young women to slip into human society. He knew it was petty and didn't care.

" _You're letting her off with a stupid nickname. 'course you are."_

"Ah, we're using pet names already." Her ear flicked. "I can live with that. So, Naruto-chan, we'll see you tomorrow. Take care until then."

"See ya."

Naruto waved at her retreating figure, then flashed back up to the roof and watched the cat until she disappeared behind a wall. There weren't any more hollows that night. 


	4. Chapter 3

Partway through lunch, yet another scream cut off abruptly. Naruto appeared on the roof's fence in a scarlet blur, the hems of his robes settling from the speed. He waved, then turned and vanished over the side of the building.

Ichigo packed his trash, made an excuse, and headed downstairs. Naruto was waiting in the shadow near the dumpsters, where the smell warded off students who might have otherwise preferred eating in the secluded corner. Ichigo tried not to breathe as he walked over.

"Sorry 'bout that," Naruto said.

Ichigo could taste faintly a tang of iron on his tongue. Now that he knew to look for it, a prickling sense of unease pressed down, giving off an impression of the same color as the platforms beneath Naruto's sandals. He'd watched this kid force a monster to its knees without lifting a hand, and he remembered all too clearly that whatever Naruto had done, it hadn't been constrained to affecting the dead.

For all that, Naruto had said he wasn't going all out. Even if the claim had been a bluff, he was still the single most dangerous person Ichigo had ever met. The single most dangerous person Ichigo had ever met, and the kid looked like he was bracing to be yelled at.

Ichigo let out a breath. Naruto didn't meet his eyes. "What are you apologizing for?"

"Yesterday. The hollow wouldn't of come 'f I hadn't talked to you."

"You didn't force it to show up," said Ichigo.

Naruto's eyes nearly closed in a frown. "Oniisan's not mad anymore?"

"I wasn't mad about that in the first place," Ichigo said, tucking his hands into his pockets. It wasn't a complete lie. He had taken more issue with the way Naruto had run off without explaining anything. "You didn't do whatever you did to me on purpose. And it's because of you that nobody at the school's been attacked today, so. Thanks."

Naruto scratched the back of head. "No problem. Um, 'bout your reiryoku, I found some people who know how to fix it." Because apparently a literal alien could find more ghost-seeing people in twenty-four hours than Ichigo could in almost sixteen years. If Ichigo was a completely different person, he might have suspected a conspiracy. "They said they'd be at the gate after school lets out, but— are you goin' back ta class now?"

"Why are you asking?"

"Tails-san's been hangin' 'round since morning. If you wanna get it over with quicker."

"Who's this Tails person?"

"Someone who wants to help you, 'ttebayo," said Naruto. At Ichigo's frown, he added, "She knows you."

"You said her name is Tails?"

"Mmhm."

Actually, that conspiracy idea? Back on the table. A woman who knew him, knew more about spirits than Naruto, knew the instant something went strange with Ichigo's ability to see ghosts, and was using an obviously fake name—that wasn't shady, that was castle-on-a-mountain-during a-lightning-storm-set-to-the wails-of-a-dying-pipe-organ levels of _ominous_.

" _Mmhm_ ," Naruto hummed again, more emphatically. "Wanna talk to her?"

"...Yeah," said Ichigo. Trying to dodge the shady conspiracy when it finally saw fit to reveal itself never worked out well. He might as well see what it was about. "Where is she right now?"

"Over by the toy shed."

"The what?"

"Y'know, the one by the track."

"Oh, toys. That's sports equipment." Ichigo started in the direction of the shed, and Naruto followed beside him.

"But 'ey're just— oh, _that's_ what they were doing in training. That's a sport?"

"It's called soccer. What were you expecting?"

Naruto shrugged. "Blood."

There wasn't any conscious decision involved; Ichigo's feet just stopped moving of their accord. He didn't say anything. There were no words.

"Soccer's boring to watch, but I think I still like oniisan's sports better," Naruto mused, not slowing.

Ichigo started walking again. "There's something wrong with the place you're from."

Naruto nodded.

As they neared the shed, the metal-sheeted canopy over the walkway shuddered in time with an animal's footsteps, and then a cat dropped down to land on the concrete. Aside from that, there was no one there.

Ichigo started to say something, but Naruto was faster. "Hi, Tails-san. Were ya sleeping?"

Ichigo slowly looked away from Naruto to stare at the cat. The cat stared back with yellow eyes. Maybe there were cat people in Naruto's dimension, so he thought it could talk back. After hollows, surely nothing could surprise Ichigo anymore.

...No, that was still strange. Probably not cat people.

Then the cat opened its mouth and said in a deep, scratchy voice, "I wish. It's not easy to take a nap with all that screaming. Thank you for your hard work, Naruto-chan." It turned its head to Ichigo. "You must be Ichigo. I'm Yoruichi."

"You're a cat!" said Ichigo. Naruto snickered.

It—he? She? Naruto had called it a female, but it was using old man pronouns and that voice was in no way feminine. And what was he doing, trying to tell a cat's sex by its voice? Well, it was either that or looking at its— wait, would that count as checking it out if it could talk? If it was male, would that count as checking out a guy? Ichigo didn't think he was gay, but if he was, this was not how he wanted to find out.

"Yes, I am," said the cat, its tail waving languidly. Ichigo tried desperately not to think about what was under that tail. "Now, tell me how much you know about what's happening with you."

When a cat strolled up and told you to do something, you didn't ask questions. "I'm bringing in hollows," Ichigo answered, "because my reiryoku is growing."

The cat glanced at Naruto, then turned its attention back to Ichigo. "That's the gist of it. The growth is beginning to slow, but it's unstable. You don't have any control over it. The way things are going, you'll pass on your issue to the people who you spend the most time near. Your family, your classmates, your teachers, your neighbors. You can see how that would be unfortunate," it said.

He hadn't known it was contagious. (His _family_.) "But you can fix it."

"I know a sketchy shopkeeper who can," it said. "He's willing to see you any time, but it would be better if you handled it—"

"Now."

"That's for the best," the cat agreed. "I'll take you there. You might want to get your things, first—it won't be a quick fix. And wrap this around your wrist." It slid a claw beneath its collar, which split at the top and fell loosely to the ground. "It'll hide your reiatsu until we get there."

* * *

Naruto slid open the door of the candy shop. Yoruichi slid beneath his feet to be the first inside. "Kisuke!" the cat called.

"He's downstairs with Ururu," said the boy behind the register. He caught the two strangers' eyes and scowled.

The cat nodded. "Come on, the basement is this way."

Ichigo had skipped school to follow a talking cat for twenty minutes to a candy shop in a back lot. He could take another leap of faith. Although, that was… really far down. The ladder had to have nearly two hundred rungs. "This can't be legal."

Yoruichi laughed. "That's the part you're worried about?"

"Where's the light coming from?" asked Naruto.

"There's an artificial sun in one of the walls somewhere."

This was surreal. Ichigo lowered himself onto the ladder, and as soon as the top of his head cleared the floor a furry weight settled in his hair. Right, the cat could talk but couldn't climb ladders. Naruto sat in the air next to him, swinging his legs, and sank at a pace to match Ichigo.

At the bottom, a man with a striped bucket hat, grey and green coat and robe, and clogs met them. The traditional clothes looked a bit disconcerting on someone who was clearly a foreigner; Naruto didn't have that effect so much, as his features could easily pass for mixed blood. The man's clothes, his hair color (although he was blond rather than Naruto's near yellow), and something about his expression and the way he carried himself all reminded Ichigo of Naruto. It didn't bode well.

"Well, now that you're here, we can get started," he said, and turned away slightly to look at the deep pit dug not far away into the rocky landscape. So that was what he shared with Naruto: neither of them ever wanted to explain anything.

"Wait," said Ichigo. "I followed Yoruichi-san this far without asking any questions, but I'd like some answers now."

The man blinked and faced him again. "That's fair. What do you want to know? I can't promise an answer to everything, but I'll do what I can."

"How do you know who I am?"

"Yoruichi-san chanced to come across your encounter with the hollow yesterday. It's not all the time you find a living human who can see the dead. Admittedly," he added, looking out from under the shadow of his hat's wide brim, "that's largely due to anyone with reiryoku developed so far being a prime target for hollows."

"Alright. So who are you?

"Oh, merely a humble shopkeeper. The name is Urahara Kisuke."

"Humble shopkeeper," said Ichigo flatly.

"As you can see," Urahara said, while standing in a terraformed bunker that could comfortably fit several football fields, "this is a perfectly normal basement to a perfectly normal candy shop."

"Oh, come on, your basement has an _artificial sun_ in it. That's not even a real thing!"

"Kisuke," said Yoruichi, draping a paw into Ichigo's line of sight as its tail tickled the back of his neck, "he's going to need to know these things. Explain properly, will you? You can be weird and sketchy another time."

Urahara sighed. "Very well, Kurosaki-san, you are correct. This is _not_ , in fact, a normal candy shop." He waited a moment, as if to give his audience time to digest this astonishing claim. "Urahara Shoten also carries merchandise from Soul Society."

"Where's that?"

"The afterlife."

Naruto perked up. "'at's right, I was goin' ta ask, 'ttebayo. Do you know what your afterlife's like?"

It was Yoruichi who answered. "There are three places it's possible to end up at. There's Hell. That's for people who've committed some kind of serious crime in life, although what crime exactly can land you there seems to be arbitrary. Nobody knows what it's like, because the ones who get sent there don't come back."

"What counts as serious?" asked Ichigo.

"Murder seems to be the low bar," said Yoruichi. "Most people don't have to worry about that possibilty. The second one is Hueco Mundo, the Hollow World. Then there's Soul Society. If we're going by the Christian view, Hueco Mundo would be something like Purgatory, while Soul Society would be Heaven. It has its own problems—not a small number of its own problems—but it's inarguably the best of the three. If you die in Soul Society, you get reincarnated back in the living world to start the cycle over."

"You sell retail from Heaven," Ichigo summarized. "Who are your customers?"

Urahara tapped his cane lightly on the ground. "You can ask that, but I honestly don't know what to say to you. I think I should mention that this shop's existence breaks a few of Soul Society's laws."

Ichigo, at least, wasn't the only one that statement alarmed, although it turned out Naruto's reasons were different. The boy asked, "Soul Society has enforcers?"

"They're called death gods," said the humble shopkeeper, and watched Naruto make a face at the name. "They also have the task of fighting hollows and ferrying the recently departed to Soul Society. I take it they have a different role where you come from?"

"There's just one Shinigami," said Naruto. "The afterlife is his."

Urahara paused. "A single entity manages the entire afterlife?"

Naruto nodded. "People can't visit or leave there on their own, and we get way less hollows 'an you do. It's probably easier." His eyes squinted in a frown. "'sides, the ones you call death gods—they're like me, right? But our Shinigami's an actual god, 'ttebayo. 's a bit different."

"It does seem that way."

"Can we get back to the part where you sell black market from Heaven?" said Ichigo. "How do you know so much about the afterlife? What are you?" Urahara started to open his mouth, and Ichigo added, "And if you give me that 'humble shopkeeper' line again—"

"Ah, you think so little of me." He raised his head up slightly, considering. Then he looked back down at Ichigo. "Have you been able to see the dead from the beginning?"

Ichigo, after a moment, shook his head. "From when I was a few years old."

"We're different there, then. I could see them from the time my memory begins. Due to circumstances that aren't important to mention right now, I had some difficulties with the living world. As such, I turned my attentions to the afterlife instead. This..." He made a short gesture with his cane. "...was eventually the result."

Ichigo glanced at Naruto. From his expression, the explanation, such as it was, didn't bother him. Ichigo, for his part, wasn't sure what to think. Sure, the man was being about as vague as it was possible to be, but what right did Ichigo have to drag his life story out of him? He'd already answered most of what he'd been asked.

"That's all I have."

"Good. Since that's settled for now..." He turned away. "Ururu! That's deep enough!"

A dour-faced little girl with pigtails and red cheeks climbed out of the pit, dragging a shovel taller than her, and wandered over to droop beside the shopkeeper. Alright then. Ichigo wondered what the boy manning the register was. Maybe a wizard. It fit with the grumpiness.

"The issue with Kurosaki-san isn't your reiryoku," said Urahara. "You're hardly a drop in the bucket compared to Naruto-san. Rather, the problem lies in your living soul. Only the dead can fully contain the level of spiritual ability you're showing." He said it so evenly that the implication nearly flew past Ichigo's head before he caught it. Urahara noticed his expression from the corner of his eye, and a faint smile turned up the man's lips. "Relax, Kurosaki-san. I asked you here to help you. Well, I say that, but you'll be helping yourself for the most part.

"There are four types of souls: the living; pluses, who you know as ghosts; hollows; and those like Naruto-san, who we call death gods. Since living is out of the equation, we'll simply have to turn your soul into a different type."

"This is still sounding disturbingly like you want to kill me," said Ichigo. He realized that he had involuntarily shuffled a foot back while the shopkeeper had been talking.

"We will have to cut your chain, yes," said Urahara easily.

" _Oh_." Naruto wasn't looking at any of them, only watching his fist slowly curl and uncurl in his lap. "So that's what— oh. That— that'll work."

"No, it won't! What part of that sounds like it'll work?" Ichigo snuck a glance at the ladder, but there wasn't any going out that way. Naruto could catch up to him easily at any point on it, and he still didn't know what was up with the kid upstairs.

"Neither pluses nor hollows have the ability to possess uninhabited bodies. Death gods do," said Urahara. "Since a body can survive indefinitely even after its soul is no longer connected, the goal is to have you possess your own body as a death god."

"It doesn't sound the best right now, but you won't notice any difference," Yoruichi offered. "You'll start feeling a little disconnected in a few years, when your soul doesn't keep aging with your body, but that's the only side effect."

"Is that what you people are?" asked Ichigo.

Naruto looked up as Urahara rapped his cane against his own shoulder. "Well done, Kurosaki-san. Although Jinta and Ururu aren't."

"Still, I can't just agree to—"

"Kurosaki-san," said Urahara, "how many hollows have attempted to attack you since yesterday?"

Ichigo stopped talking.

"How many," the shopkeeper continued, "have attempted to attack you while you were with people you care for?"

It was blatant manipulation, but it was manipulative because it worked. Ichigo remembered last night too well, laying in bed and trying to figure out in which direction and how far away the screams were, up until at some point when they had stopped coming. And then school, when he had watched the second hand tick on the clock, waiting for the next hollow to show up. He hadn't seen anything when he had looked out, except for once when the scream was more a roar and a massive eel coiled in the air, the fan of its tail scraping against the window at the rear of the classroom, had sent a small red blur crashing into the street just outside the school's gate. Ichigo had excused himself to go to the restroom just as crackling electricity shrieked down from the hollow's spines; by the time he'd made it outside, though, there'd been nothing there.

If nothing else, Naruto had spent all of that day and the night before killing monsters to protect Ichigo. Ichigo didn't know if death gods needed to eat or sleep, but either way, even though the kid didn't look any worse for wear, that must have taken a toll.

On top of that, some of the hollows had put up an actual fight. If one showed up that was stronger than Naruto, there'd be nothing Ichigo could do for himself or those he was with. His name meant "protector". His parents hadn't given it to him so he would put others in danger for his sake.

Ichigo said stiffly, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to sever your chain of fate. Then it'll be up to you either become a death god or go hollow."

"Go hollow?" Right, that was a possibility for ghosts. "How am I supposed to become a death god?"

"I can't give specifics. Every person goes through it differently. But I can tell you this: your power won't be like physical strength or intelligence. It is a part of you, but it's distinct from you as well. You'll recognize it when you find it."

"Great. _How_ am I going to find it?"

That was definitely a smile on Urahara's face. "Climb out." He raised his cane, the end pointed at Ichigo's face, and Ichigo just had time to notice the odd logo on the bottom before it touched his forehead and then kept going.

Ichigo landed on his feet, the chain extending from his chest clinking as his limp body fell bonelessly to the ground, with his backpack cushioning the fall enough that he didn't think it was going to bruise. Yoruichi touched down lightly beside it. Before he could get his bearings, the cane came down on the chain near his body, and the link it landed it shattered without resistance.

The little girl he hadn't seen move picked him up. "Hey, wait—"

And then he found out she'd been digging a pit for as she threw him. For long seconds, the walls raced past. When he hit the bottom, he should have broken every bone in his body, but instead it only sent a few jolts of pain through him.

He sat up, wincing, and looked at the circle of sky above. The other peered down at him. Naruto had an odd look on his face that Ichigo couldn't read, Urahara was clearly serious, Ururu's expression hadn't changed, and Yoruichi was a cat.

"Three days, Kurosaki-san!" Urahara shouted. Suddenly, Ichigo's arms twisted behind his back. Panicked, he twisted around to look and saw a set of metal cuffs holding his wrists together. How had the crazy shopkeeper—? "Make the most of it."

"How am I supposed to get out without using my hands?" he yelled back.

"I have faith in your desperation."

He and Ururu left. Yoruichi called, "Don't panic! That will speed up the hollowification. I'll stay here. Tell me if you want something to eat or drink."

Then Yoruichi retreated from the edge as well. Naruto said nothing as Ichigo gritted his teeth and started looking for footholds in the walls.


	5. Chapter 4

**AN:** So this isn't too relevant yet, but I haven't read the Quincy Blood War or Fourth Shinobi War arcs. Unless one of the trustworthier characters explicitly states otherwise, it's probably a safe bet to just pretend none of the information revealed in those arcs is canon to this story, including things like backstories/flashbacks, lore, abilities, and extra characters.

 _Tenchou_ just means shopkeeper. _Geta-boushi_ literally translates to Clogs-hat; I think the official translation has it as Hat-and-Clogs.

* * *

Naruto knew how to tell when someone was lying. Case in point: he hadn't heard Tenchou-san string more than two true words together at any point, and those two words had been his name.

He'd lied through omission and misleading statements, though, not outright falsehoods. There was a difference. He expected Ichigo-oniisan to see through him at some point, and didn't want him to hate or mistrust him when that time came.

Despite his caginess, the man meant well. Or, at least, he genuinely did want to see Ichigo-oniisan alive, for a given value of alive. He wasn't lying to hurt anyone. Going by what information he had been omitting, he was trying to keep oniisan away from whatever ill relationship he'd kindled with Soul Society.

That Soul Society had kindled with him—there had been echoes of grief in his words when he'd spoken of the laws he'd broken.

The man who Haku had chosen to go with had become a missing-nin and been forced to leave Water Country, but he'd never quite _left_. When the pardon had come from Yagura-san's successor to the position of the Hidden Mist's Kage, he hadn't hesitated to cut what shallow ties he'd forged on the mainland. Ringo-san and Kakashi gave off the same impression (although, now that he thought of it, the Mizukage should have called Ringo-san back too), and Sasuke's brother, and some of those Naruto had helped move on and others who he had glimpsed in passing. Tenchou-san fit too well in that list.

Down in the pit, Ichigo-oniisan landed on his back again. He'd tried once to climb with his mouth substituting for his hands, but an in-depth exploration of the taste of dirt had been the only result of that experiment, and his attempt to gouge out better footholds had come with the discovery that ghosts couldn't affect the physical world. Since then, he'd stuck to trying to wall-walk without chakra, which worked as well as it sounded.

His body had been moved a little distance from the ladder. Ururu-chan had set it up with a futon and a parasol to keep the sun off. Otherwise, it had been left alone. Naruto kept glancing back to check that it was breathing. He was used to bodies without souls lasting three hours at the most before chakra exhaustion crept in and their organs shut down, but the people here didn't need chakra to survive. It was something he had to get used to.

The link at the end of Ichigo-oniisan's chain grew mouths and began to devour itself. Naruto flinched at his scream.

"It was bound to happen at some point," Tails-san said, looking up from the book she was reading. It wasn't written in the same language as the street signs outside. "Karakura is situated on what's called the jureichi, the highest concentration of spiritual energy in the living world. It's frequented by plenty of people from both sides of the afterlife. If it wasn't you, it would have been a hollow, or a less altruistic death god."

Ichigo-oniisan stood shakily. "Naruto!" he shouted, and if there was a tremor in his voice, Naruto wasn't going to be the one to point it out. "What did you do to become a death god?"

Behind the snapped and twisted bars of the great cell, Chikai's slumbering form flicked an ear, and the corner of her lip peeled back in a grimace. His performance with the first hollow yesterday had given her some satisfaction, but everything afterwards had angered her enough that by Ichigo-oniisan's second class that morning she had gone to sleep rather than keep watching. Which suited Naruto just fine. Usually he couldn't stand her silence, but Ichigo-oniisan's efforts filled the area around the pit with enough sound that he could almost ignore the empty space in his thoughts that her vitriol should have occupied.

Every once in a while, though, usually during a fight, he caught a flash of a dream; for an instant then, when he heard oniisan's words, he smelled rot and sterilizing chemicals. He remembered starkly what he had done. He wouldn't wish it on anything.

"You c'n figure it out, oniisan!" He pumped a fist. "Believe it!"

"Yoruichi-san?"

"Can't help you, kid. My circumstances were completely different."

Ichigo-oniisan cursed under his breath as he readied himself for another assault on the wall. Several more fruitless attempts later, he caught their attention again. "How exactly are death gods different from normal ghosts?"

Naruto exchanged a glance with Tails-san. Her existence still confused him, but she did mean it when she called herself a death god. "Do you want to take this?" she asked.

"Tails-san c'n do it." He wasn't used to talking about himself with the expectation that the person listening could learn to do the same things he could. He hadn't fully wrapped his mind yet around the fact that he wasn't alone.

"The main difference," Tails-san called down, "is that death gods have zanpakuto. They're a special type of weapon that's a manifestation of the innermost parts of a death god's soul." Naruto usually tried not to dwell on what it said about him that his reflection was Chikai. "You've seen Naruto-chan's kunai."

"Right, _kunai._ I kept calling it a trowel in my head..."

Naruto blinked at his knife. Weren't trowels for painting houses? Beside him, Tails-san's whiskers trembled. "How do you recognize a trowel but not a kunai?" she asked.

"I remember it now!" His ears were red to go with the cheeks that had gone pink with exertion. "So it's a part of his soul? Is that what Geta-boushi meant about a death god's power?"

"Geta-boushi!" When she stopped wheezing, she said, "Yes, that's right. Also, be aware that they'll have a name. You don't need to know what it is, but remember that they have one."

"You name your weapons?"

"I'm stopping that right there," Tails-san cut in. "Zanpakuto aren't just sharp bits of metal to swing around. They have their own wills and personalities, and, yes, they do have names. The regular souls in Soul Society mock death gods for calling their weapons by name, and even some of the weaker death gods, the ones who can't hear their zanpakuto's names, do the same, but there's a significant gulf in ability between a death god who knows their weapon's name and one who doesn't. You're starting off handicapped already with a short time limit. If you can't accept your own power, you'll only be able to go hollow."

He still looked skeptical, but nodded and got back to work.

"Tails-san, how're you talking? Cat throats can't make human sounds naturally."

Tails-san stretched out with a yawn and sat up. "Right now, it's because Kisuke made this body to allow for speech. Outside of this body, turning into a cat is my zanpakuto's ability, so things like physical impossibility don't have a place in the picture."

Naruto startled. "Tenchou-san _made_ your body?"

"It's a false body called a gigai. They're common tools for death gods who get injured in the living world, since staying in a physical body slightly dampens reiatsu presence and speeds up a soul's healing process. Kisuke's something of a specialist at making them." Her tail slid across the ground. "I'm sure he could make one for you. You're small enough that it wouldn't even need that much material."

A common tool.

Tails-san slipped out of her body as easily as an otter into water, padded over, and set her front paws on Naruto's thigh, prodding his hand with her nose until he got the hint and lifted it. She fit her head under his hand, letting his fingers rest the soft fur behind her ears. He'd never touched an animal before other than Akamaru and the odd bug. That had been nearly half a lifetime ago.

She climbed into his lap, a warm, tangible weight, and curled up. Bunching into a tight ball like that couldn't have been comfortable for her. "I'll get him on it when he comes back," she said. "He's off right now looking for hollows who might know something about the place you're from."

"Mmkay," he rasped, mouth suddenly dry.

"You haven't seen much of this world, have you? This sleepy little town's not much to look at. If you aren't in a rush to return, I've been thinking about dropping by Japan's capital again. You feel like coming with?"

Naruto didn't need to breathe except to talk, but he did then to ground himself, to pull his thoughts back to reality. Physical objects couldn't go through a garganta. If he... did get a body, he would have to leave it behind.

And he did have to go back soon. Gaara-kun was vastly improved from when Naruto had first found him three months ago, but considering what he had been like in the beginning, that wasn't saying as much as it should have. If he thought Naruto had abandoned him, there was a good chance he would regress. His dad wasn't helping matters. The Kazekage had started scouting him out recently, prodding for the limits of his unexplained change in temperament.

Gaara was alive. His life was a precious thing, but no one had ever given him a chance to learn what that meant. If Naruto didn't go back soon, it might be that no one ever would. Oh, there was Shukaku-san, but the old raccoon dog was a whole other tangled nest of issues all his own. He was almost as toxic an influence as Gaara-kun's dad.

"Rain check?" It ached a little to smile. He'd been to so many small towns that they'd begun to bleed together, and Karakura definitely wasn't a small town, no matter what anyone called it. He really wanted to see what kind of city would count as a capital in this world. To go there with a physical body. To know that the people around him would know he was there, to pretend for a short while that he mattered.

"Do what you need to. I'll still be here." Tails-san flicked an ear. "Well, maybe not, but Kisuke's certainly not going anywhere. He can find me. Sometimes. When I let him."

They were quiet for a while. Then Tails-san said, "Naruto-chan, when you have a gigai, you shouldn't bring it out—"

"—'round oniisan," Naruto finished.

"That's right," she said, amused. "Whatever the state of his soul, he's very much still alive as long as he keeps a hold of his heart. None of us wants to drag him into our mess." She raised her head to look him in the eye. "About you, now. What have you figured out?"

"Short version?"

She paused. "Short version."

"Everything." Her tail swatted his sleeve, and he grinned. "'ere's another person who works at the shop. You, him—her? Him. Him, Tails-san, and Tenchou-san're from Soul Society. The— death gods," it sounded strange to call anyone other than the Shinigami that, "there did something ya disagreed with— not you, at first. Tenchou-san, and maybe the other person. The other person for sure. You came in later. Plus some more people? Right. It weren't everyone there that disagreed, jus' a few, but everyone else agreed with them and not you. They— thought Tenchou-san and the other person did something when they didn't, an' they had to leave. You went with them 'cause Tenchou-san's your friend, but I dunno why the other people— The thing they think Tenchou-san and the other person did, they think they did it ta those other people, and what happened to those other people was bad enough that they had to leave too even though they were the victims. It made them dangerous? Soul Society thinks it made them dangerous."

Tails-san was looking at him as if she'd never seen him before, her mouth hanging slightly open.

"Soul Society's trying not to know where you are 'cause it inn't worth it to come after you but what they think you did was too big for them to ignore, so they're really trying _really hard_ , even though Tenchou-san's not making it easy what with the openly selling afterlife merchandise and that big sign out front with his name written all 'cross it. He's a lot angrier 'bout what happened 'an Tails-san. I mean you're not happy about it, but you weren't the one personally targeted either. Ya think the ones who framed you are going ta do something else so you're planning something too to go up against them with.

"Also, Tenchou-san wants to give you something. It's not ready yet so he's trying to keep you here 'til it is without letting ya know."

"I knew _that_ ," she croaked. "Where did the rest come from?"

"How much was right?"

"I'm not telling you," she said. "Has anyone ever let you know that you're never allowed to be a spy when you grow up?"

A Cloud chuunin had told Naruto once that his village's Torture and Interrogation department would cheerfully sacrifice any five of their personnel to some weird Hot Water-based god of sadism in exchange for him. "Yup."

"Good. Remember those wise words. I mean it, where did you get all that from?"

He scratched the back of his head. "The way you talk, the things you do. 's mostly just that I have a lot of practice from talking ninja ghosts down. It's like trying to walk through a hurricane without getting wet, 'cept the raindrops're primed 'splosive tags. There aren't second chances, 'ttebayo. I couldn't afford not ta learn."

"No worries, then. You learned alright," said Tails-san. "Talking ghosts down?"

"Wait, but then— How d'you send 'em to the afterlife then?"

She glanced at Chikai. "I thought it was strange that your zanpakuto's hilt has a rounded end. Death gods here perform konsou, which entails pressing the bottom of a zanpakuto's grip to a ghost's forehead to send them to Soul Society."

"You don't help them find peace first?"

Tails-san wrinkled her nose a little. "That would go over well. No, there are too many ghosts and not enough death gods to walk each of them through their problems. And basic diplomacy isn't a part of many death gods' skill sets either. Konsou is efficient." She added at a mutter, "Although maybe they should start trying it your way if it gives you that kind of insight. That was the _short_ version. What is the long one supposed to be?"

"Tails-san was a daimyo before—"

"That was rhetorical!" Her fur started to drift back down to lie against her skin after a few seconds. She buried her head under a foreleg.

"Would it help 'f I explained how?"

Her voice came out muffled. " _Can_ you?"

"No, but I think it's called cold reading?"

A lot of it wasn't conscious anymore, and the rest he didn't know how to talk about properly. Tails-san wasn't the first to cotton on to him knowing more than he'd been told. The other two who had and asked for the information bomb treatment weren't able to follow most of his explanation afterwards. Baito-jii, the Hidden Cloud chuunin, had been convinced he was a Yamanaka trying to cover up for using a mind-reading technique, a belief Naruto hadn't been able to talk him out of. Tails-san looked upset, though, so he'd thought he should at least make the offer.

"If that was cold reading, I'm a poodle." She moved her leg off her face and settled her chin on his thigh. "Cold reading is about saying things that are vague enough to apply to anyone, which makes it seem like you know what you're talking about. That's not what you did at all. What do you do back home?"

"Travel. Help who I can," he said. There wasn't much else for a ghost.

"How long have you been at that for?"

He tilted his head. It was March, and… last March he had been in… Fire, at first, to visit Kakashi and check on Sasuke, and Kakashi had been on a mission so he'd waited for him to get back before visiting Iron, and then from there he'd headed out to Rice to clean up after Orochimaru's messes. The March before that—he held out fingers to count—had been Earth and Hidden Rock, with Kenmaru and Akasuki-nee, plus running into Nii-neesan again, and the one before _that_ had been Haku except for the incident with the Uchiha. And then the one before that had been Haku, and before that he'd been in Leaf because he was alive. That was almost his whole hand, so… "Four."

"Four years," she clarified. "How old are you?"

"Eleven." No, that was in October, and October came after March. Eleven minus one was… "Nine?"

"Hm." After a moment, she said, "So, after twenty minutes of listening to Kisuke lie his tongue blue, a nine- or eleven-year old came closer to what actually happened than Soul Society's managed in a century."

He blinked. "Your hair's super dark for a granny."

"A century's not old, Naruto-chan. The only old death god is Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni. He predates the modern calendar, which starts two thousand years ago."

That was _definitely_ old. He didn't know much about history, but he wasn't sure it went back that far.

"It's one of the many reasons death gods have a tendency to stagnate," she went on. "Too much time to spend and too many outdated practices and beliefs to cling to. The ones like Kisuke, and the ones like you, don't come by often."

He didn't know what she meant by Tenchou-san, but the other qualifier caught his attention first. "The ones like me?"

"In four years, without any help or support, without even knowing what you _are_ or what abilities you should have access to, you figured out shikai, shunpo, reiatsu manipulation, and whatever that psychic thing you can do is."

"It's not psychic," said Naruto patiently. Nobody else could figure it out, but _he_ knew what he was doing, mostly. It was a mixture of attention to detail, reasoning, and gut feeling. He was sure he'd know if he could read thoughts.

"Either you're psychic or you're from the future. Take your pick," she said dryly. "Even ignoring that, you can't deny that your learning curve is absurd."

"'s not like I figured it all out completely from scratch. Like, with shun...po? There's a shinobi technique called shunshin I copied, and what I have is slower 'an shunshin, 'ttebayo."

"That's because you're substituting brute force for technique. What you're doing is expelling uncontrolled reiatsu from the entire sole of your foot. You're not taking into account vectors or resistance from different—" Tails-san stopped and sighed. "I'll put it this way: you're using more reiatsu than you need to and getting less of a result for it."

"That makes sense."

"It's fine for weaker hollows, but if you come up against a prolonged fight you'll run out of reiatsu that much more quickly," said Tails-san. "Also, it's painful to watch." She stepped onto the ground, lay back into her body, and shook the dust out of her fur. The bare air was cold on Naruto's hand. "Here, I'm curious what you'll be able to do when you know the actual technique. I'll teach you the right way to perform shunpo later," Naruto startled, "but I haven't eaten since this morning and I'm hungry. What do you want?"

"I'm a ghost," he said, a little numb. He was getting a teacher?

She stared at him. "But you eat, don't you?" Her eyes narrowed. "No, spirit particles come from the afterlife, and you said you can't access your afterlife... Still, you can't _not_ eat. Tell me you don't get your food from Hueco Mundo."

"Ghosts can eat?" He'd never needed to. In the beginning, he had tried a few times, but it was difficult when he couldn't touch anything, and he'd gotten over the loss since.

Her tail lashed once. "That's settled, I'm getting you something. Any preference for your first meal in four years?"

What food had he liked? Taste was a distant memory, but he thought he remembered a lot of cup ramen. He must have been fond of it if he'd had so much. "Ramen?"

"Flavor?"

"Um, miso."

She nodded. "Ichigo! It's five o'clock. I'm going to go grab food. What type of ramen do you want?"

"Is that instant ramen?"

"The real thing, obviously. I'm not cheap."

"Tsukemen, I guess."

"Don't go hollow while I'm gone!" She looked back to Naruto. "Do you want to catch a nap before I get back? I know you haven't slept in at least two days. Or is that one of the things you don't need either?"

"I only sleep once in a week," said Naruto. "'m fine right now."

"Yoruichi-san, is there a phone around here I can use?"

"To call your family, right? There's no need. Kisuke let them know you'd be away for a few days."

A pause. "Did he?"

She put her head out over the pit. "He didn't tell them anything he didn't think you'd want them knowing. Just the truth—a beautiful woman dropped by the school, you didn't feel well, you slipped out with her wearing her accessories and need to stay in the basement of her questionably criminal friend's business enterprise until things settle down. Your father sounded like he said something about respecting your privacy. It was hard to hear through the sobbing." Her whiskers didn't even twitch.

Naruto peeked over the edge to get a glimpse of his expression—part disbelief, part abject mortification—then hurriedly pulled back. He didn't object to her trying to make Ichigo-oniisan dislike her group, but he wished… ah, well. It was for a good cause. Oniisan was too nice. Unless the shop burned all their bridges with him during the constructions, he might try to help them if he found out about their situation.

"He seemed like an interesting character." She turned around and headed for the ladder. "Keep trying at it! I'll be back."


	6. Chapter 5

The current lords of Hueco Mundo: to the south, the Centaur; to the north, the Shark; to the east, the Gargoyle; to the west, the Wasteland; in the center, in the white castle of the night that rose from the sands in a mockery of the pale moon, the one who called himself God-King.

Lesser menos came and went, but vasto lords, once established, were difficult to rout. Partly this was a result of their strength, and partly this was because there was simply no motive to. They were fiercely territorial, but for the most part cared little enough about the worlds outside their lands and had no interest in amassing more power than they already possessed. The young Centaur excepted, these lords had held their current domains for hundreds of years.

Recently, rumors had begun to spread. The Menos Forest stood unclaimed as the lingering traces of the Centaur's presence began to fade. The Gargoyle who had long held sentinel atop the peak of the desert world's sole mountain had abandoned his post. The winter that older hollows predicted would host the God-King's next Wild Hunt came and went without event.

Other tales told of a death god who offered salvation—salvation from his comrades' blades, from the hunger of the residents of the Hollow World, and from a hollow's own nature. Hollows who had fled from Las Noches claimed that the God-King had bowed his head to this interloper who would be their messiah.

It was wild, baseless. A single death god, even one of their vaunted captains, could never have defeated the God-King. They had tried before. The Old God, perhaps, might have stood a chance, but it had been so long since any hollow had witnessed this supposed leader of their nemeses that he had long since passed into the realm of tall tales, become merely a monster to represent all that their kind hated and feared about death gods.

But then the question still stood: where had the lords gone?

"When did the Gargoyle disappear?" Kensei asked. When the small hollow only huddled there, cowering, he prodded it with a foot. It sprung immediately to quivering attention.

"Wh— when? Er, lemme— sirs, two moon phases back, mebbe. Three? Te— Yes, three, it's right, jus' three, or two. Ain't so long ago. I jus' heard of it a phase ago, myself. I ain't one sirs want to be asking. Begging yer pardon, sirs. Don't mean to assume. Please don't eat me, sirs."

Kensei dismissed it. It wasted no time in scurrying off to vanish over a dune.

"Let's go," said Shinji. He reached out and pulled, ripping space apart to reveal passage to a lightless void. They pulled on their reiatsu-concealing cloaks before stepping through.

The garganta led out onto a grassy cliff that overlooked the sea. Puffins circled through the pale sky. The other Visored plus one had claimed an unoccupied patch of ground to wait at.

Shinji's and Kensei's ivory masks dissipated as their feet touched solid ground. Rose glanced up politely. Hachi started to stand, hand already moving towards his own face. "Are we switching?" the kidou user asked.

"Nah," said Shinji. "We got what we need—"

He startled—a puffin had tried to land where he was standing. The bird seemed just as surprised at the sudden resistance open air offered it and tried to flail away, making its moaning cries, but one wing, caught in Shinji's leg, flapped sluggishly. "Yeesh." The Visored moved off it and watched it make its escape out over the water. "Of all the places, Kisuke."

The only death god present had a yellow scarf on as a concession to the temperature. He didn't have a hollow's power warding him from the cold. "Oh, be careful with them, Hirako-san. Puffins are an endangered species."

Hiyori broke off her staring contest with a nearby puffin to kick her former captain in the face. "All the more reason not to be here! What happens if a menos follows us back, huh?"

Kisuke sat back up slowly, holding his bleeding nose. Despite the injury, he was smiling. "You haven't changed, Hiyori-san."

"The hell's that supposed to mean, baldy?"

"It's not a problem if you're followed here," he said. "There are no living humans nearby to be caught in the crossfire, there are no traces here to link back to your current place of residence, and, of course, puffins are unaffected by reiatsu."

That actually jarred Love and Rose out of their manga and book respectively. Shinji, who had just had one of the birds react to his presence, said, "Wait, what?"

"That's stupid," said Hiyori, scowling. "You're stupid. That's not how it works."

"No, no, it's true!" Kisuke gestured at the puffin Hiyori had been haunting. "Hadou 31: Shakkahou."

The bright red fireball hit its target dead-on. He had clearly underpowered it, but even a relatively weak spell wasn't something to scoff at coming from a captain-level death god. Against a physical body, it should have caused a painful burn, and indeed, tendrils of smoke crept up from the surrounding grass. The puffin gave the smoldering plants a concerned look and scooted away.

Hiyori stared at it with something like horror. "What did you _do_ to it?"

"Me?" He flicked his fan open. "Puffins are naturally immune. It's one of the great mysteries of the universe."

Without looking up from her swimsuit model magazine, Lisa drew her zanpakuto and brought it down on the puffin's back. The bird began to dissolve from the cut outwards, breaking apart into scarlet dust.

"Whoops," said Kisuke.

"...Was it fake the whole time?" asked Hiyori.

"I'm surprised you didn't notice it wasn't blinking."

As Hiyori tried to pummel him off the cliff, Kensei asked, "Where's Mashiro?"

"She's scaring the birds down by the shore," Love said, and Kensei closed his eyes for a moment and let out an exhale that wasn't a sigh.

Meanwhile, Shinji pulled Hiyori away by the scruff of her cloak, holding her out at arm's length as she flailed at him. "What do you think you're doing, you baldy—"

"Calm down, really. We won't know what to do next if ya kill him now."

It took a few minutes for them all to put on at least a veneer of professionalism. Kensei dragged Mashiro back to the group with a hand over her face to stop her from making puffin noises, reading material was reluctantly put way, and Hiyori glowered down at them all from atop a rock.

Once everyone was settled, Kisuke took the stage. "What did you learn?"

"Aizen's nabbed the Gargoyle," said Shinji.

"Or killed him," Kensei said. "There were signs of a fight by the mountain. None of the hollows we questioned noticed anything, so it couldn't have been a large one, but Aizen wouldn't have to throw around much force to kill a vasto lorde."

Love's mouth twisted. "No one should have a zanpakuto with no limits."

"There's one he has to have," said Kensei.

He didn't blink when Mashiro's upside-down face leaned into his vision. "But we don't know what it is, so it doesn't matter, right?"

Kisuke idly spread his fan. "I haven't heard anything about a massive influx of new arrivals in Soul Society, but Aizen might have done something to redirect the vasto lorde's pluses if he didn't want to draw attention. Had one of his hollows eat him, maybe. There's no way to know for certain yet, so we'll operate on the worst-case assumption until proven otherwise. Aizen's recruited the Gargoyle. The other two are still independent?"

"Seems that way," said Shinji.

"In that case, is anyone here up for a meeting with the Wasteland?"

After a moment of strained silence, Shinji, the Visored's unofficial spokesperson, set his elbows on his knees and voiced what all the others were thinking. "Kisuke, we're not scientists out to steal your ideas. You're allowed to _explain_ things. We followed you here to the middle of nowhere—"

"We're in Greenland," Kisuke corrected.

"—to the _middle_ of _nowhere_ ," said Shinji, "because you might be crazy, but you've generally got an idea what you're doing. We're gonna need just a little more than blind trust, though, if ya want us to risk our lives."

Kisuke met his eyes. After a few seconds too many, the death god looked away, tapping the side of his closed fan against his cheek. He took a deep breath. Some of the tension leaked from his shoulders, and suddenly he looked much smaller without his heavy shopkeeper's robe. "It's been a busy two days," he said. "I've been pushing through mostly on momentum. Alright, I'll explain. We're in something of a rush, so please let me finish first before you ask questions.

"Two days ago, an unfamiliar death god arrived in Karakura. It seemed like the Thirteenth had learned their lesson from the last one, because this one's signature was significantly more powerful than death gods assigned to patrol usually are. Unsuppressed, it'd have been at lower captain level. There were no limiters on them aside from their own technique."

Several of the Visored were clearly itching to say something at that. Kisuke shrugged off their sharpened attention and went on, "Yoruichi-san has been staying at the shop since last week, so I asked her to look into it. About an hour before she returned, a second signature, this one the level of a two-year Academy student, appeared beside the first, followed swiftly by a hollow's emergence. The death god significantly lowered the strength of their suppression for seven minutes; when they renewed the technique, the hollow was gone, and the second signature had grown to a third-year Academy student's level. The death god immediately left, but remained at all times within four miles of the second signature.

"As it turned out, the second signature belonged to Kurosaki Ichigo."

"Shiba's—" Rose began.

"Shiba Isshin's son," said Kisuke with a nod. "The—"

"And you left Karakura with the Gotei—" Hiyori threw a wad of bird poop at him that passed through his head. He winced slightly. "You would not have left if the situation wasn't stable. My apologies."

"It's alright. As I was saying, the second signature was Isshin-san's son, while the first was a death god who has never had any contact with the Gotei."

"That's not possible," said Hiyori.

"He claimed to be from another living world with an afterlife that operates by very different rules that I won't delve into right now, and that he had ended up here by following a hollow through Hueco Mundo. Yoruichi-san suspected at first that he was messing with Kurosaki-san, but the hollow corroborated his story before he killed it.

"Leaving aside for a moment the issue of an entire world and afterlife we've never even suspected the existence of, Aizen has recently obtained his third vasto lorde. He'll need to deliver on some of his promises soon. To make an arrancar of a hollow that powerful, his own Hogyoku isn't enough. He needs mine. Meanwhile, a captain-level death god who the Gotei have no records of recently appeared in Karakura before vanishing just as abruptly, and an apparently unremarkable human he had brief contact with suddenly gained an unprecedented amount of spiritual power, both of which can easily be spun to sound like soul experimentation."

"You have the worst luck of anyone I've ever heard of," said Shinji, his grin all teeth. "So you need a hole to stick the Hogyoku in before Aizen brings the Gotei knocking, and you're going to use this other world for that by finding a hollow to take you there."

"Why don't you go into hiding?" Love asked. "This is risky. It's not like you."

"It's just like him," said Shinji. "He's always been reckless under pressure. You didn't see this coming at all, didja?"

"It is a bit embarrassing."

"It totally is," said Hiyori. "How did you miss an entire _world_? Were you too busy selling candy to children to actually do your job?"

"Ah, but selling candy to children is my job, Hiyori-san! I'm only a humble shopkeeper. Research is merely a hobby."

Lisa said, "How certain are you that the death god isn't pulling wool over your eyes?"

"More certain than I think I should be, less than I'm fully comfortable with. The majority of the evidence does point towards him telling him the truth, unlikely as it sounds. As things stand, I'm willing to gamble on it."

He pulled his hood lower. "We stand to lose too much if I _don't_ risk it. We can't go into hiding without leaving Isshin-san's family vulnerable, right after Kurosaki-san put himself on Soul Society's radar, and if they left as well there would be no one stationed in Karakura."

"About Isshin," said Kensei, "what happened with his son?"

"Being exposed to such a large amount of reiatsu triggered his latent death god powers to awaken," said Kisuke. "It wasn't unexpected—before the Soul King and Captain-Commander consolidated the afterlife's powers, death gods interacted with the living world fairly frequently, so there are plenty of records of half-death god children taking after their dead parent in reiryoku. I had contingency plans prepared for when it happened. Yoruichi-san is helping him through them. He'll be fine. Probably."

"He's not going to die, is he?" asked Hiyori. "'cause I won't get to kill you if Shiba does it first."

"There is a zero percent chance of the process killing him," said Kisuke.

Hiyori looked unimpressed. "You'd better know what you're doing, baldy."

"Sounds like you have that covered without our help. So if ya just need a hollow for this," said Shinji, "why are you going after a lord?"

"It has to be a hollow from the other world, or one that's eaten a hollow from the other world. A vasto lorde should fit the latter criterion. That, plus it would only be helpful if we could convince even a single vasto lorde not to join Aizen. I know I've asked all of you before not to interfere with Aizen's activities in Hueco Mundo, but that was out of worry that he would frame me, again, and convince the Gotei of my building an army of hollows at Las Noches." He shrugged. "Since the Gotei will be coming down on us in Karakura regardless, there's nothing to lose by acting anymore. As for if you're wondering why the Wasteland, Aizen might already be making overtures to the Shark. The Wasteland, on the other hand, is a complete unknown; he'll be saving them for last."

"This is moving rather quickly," Rose said. "Instead of over a year, it seems like we have than a less a week before we go to war."

"Sorry for springing this on—"

"It's no trouble."

"We've spent long enough waiting," said Love.

"Wait a second," said Lisa, "this other world has an afterlife. Are they going to attack us for smuggling a dangerous artifact over?"

"Naruto-san says he's the only death god in his world. I'm inclined to believe him."

Lisa leaned back against the rock face. "Whatever."

Kisuke cleared his throat. "Now, about the Wasteland..."

"How many are you bringing?" asked Shinji.

Kisuke smiled faintly, snapping his fan open. "Oh... two should be enough."

"Ah, I'll go." Shinji glanced over the rest.

Lisa stood laboriously when his eyes flicked over her, one hand drawing her mask over her face. "I'll do it." She brought her sword down in a line, splitting the salt-tinged air.

The garganta gaped over the cliff. Lisa stepped inside first, then paused on the threshold to wait when Kisuke half-turned to the others. "If we're not back by tonight, everyone, would you be willing to assist Yoruichi-san in Karakura? I'd count it as a favor."

"'Count it as a favor'," Hiyori repeated nasally. "Didn't you say you were in a rush? Get moving already."

"We'll hold the fort down," said Kensei.

"Please be careful," said Hachi.

Love added, "Don't die."

Kisuke bowed and followed Lisa through. Shinji slid his mask on, then closed the garganta behind them.


End file.
